In the darkness of the room, the last traces of confusion and agitation had been scoured clean from Mo Fan's eyes, replaced by something cold and killing.
He was like a hunter who had just clawed his way out of a nightmare—staring at the trap laid before him, the one dressed up as a Xanadu.
But he didn't kick the door open and go looking for a direct confrontation.
To be able to lay down an array that covers an entire village... He ran the numbers in the dark.
Whoever Fang Tong calls "master" is absolutely no ordinary character.
If he charged out blind, in a village where the enemy knew every corner and he knew nothing, one wrong step and he'd walk straight into another trap.
One ambush from whatever old monster was hiding in the shadows, and he'd be nothing but fresh meat delivering itself to the door—pure feeding.
His gaze moved to Mo Yan—standing in the corner like a black stone sculpture.
He stared at those hollow, expressionless eye sockets.
And something clicked.
Back in the village, the illusion was torturing me so badly I wished I were dead. Mo Yan wasn't affected at all. Which means... its target is living beings!
Mo Yan, and even all the skeleton soldiers packed inside his storage bag.
They were pure undead creatures—animated by nothing but soul-fire, running entirely on Mo Fan's mental commands.
An array designed to prey on the living? To a pile of bones? completely immune to mental and illusory interference
That was the way to break the game!
"But Mo Yan's already been seen."
Mo Fan rubbed his chin. "If Mo Yan goes out there to kill now, they'll know immediately I wasn't caught. They might even suspect my true identity."
The old village head confidently sold that story about a mutant weasel yesterday, The bounty notice said livestock turned to mummies—suspected evil entity...
The corner of Mo Fan's mouth pulled into an extremely malicious cold sneer.
Then let's help them play this act out to the very end. Let's make the fiction real!
He reached for the high-grade storage bag at his waist.
A moment later, a streamlined skeletal frame full of the aesthetics of violence landed silently onto the floor of the empty room.
Summon No. 003.
Mo Fan lay back on the bed, fully clothed, and closed his eyes.
His massive mental power surged outward like a dam breaking—flooding into 003's skull in a single wave.
[ Undead Sovereign · Forced Override ]
Vision switched.
When Mo Fan opened his eyes again, his field of view had changed. The entire world was washed in a grayish-blue filter.
He felt the explosive power coiled inside this spliced-together body—no flesh, no blood, but the power packed into those bones moved exactly as he willed.
The true fierce beast... had arrived.
Moments later, Summon No. 003 moved like a weightless white ghost, its four limbs carrying it silently over the side courtyard wall and out into Linshui Village.
Near the village entrance, an early-rising village woman was carrying a wooden basin toward the well, humming a cheerful little tune under her breath, face bright with a happy smile.
Creaaaak...
The faintest sound of bone friction rang out behind her.
She paused her water-fetching motion and turned her head with a puzzled frown.
The next second, the smile died on her face instantly, her pupils violently dilating to the limit!
Less than fifteen feet away, the crops had been silently parted.
A massive skeletal behemoth—the size of an ox, covered in a cold, hard metallic luster—stood perfectly still, watching her.
Its giant claws, modified from a demon tiger's forelimbs, dug deeply into the dirt. The grotesque skull tilted slightly downward.
And deep inside those hollow, profound eye sockets, two clusters of ghostly blue soul-fire were dancing, staring at her coldly.
That absolute terror—striking straight through the soul and belonging to death's domain—instantly pierced her psychological defenses!
Uh—
A tiny, strangled sound escaped her throat.
Before she even had time to let out a scream, her eyes rolled back. The wooden basin hit the ground with a clatter.
She folded like a wet noodle and fainted dead away into the dirt from sheer terror.
Mo Fan didn't bother with the fainted mortal. He swaggered 003 openly, straight into this so-called "paradise."
He wasn't here to slaughter deceived mortals.
He was here to create ultimate chaos—a storm violent enough to tear the sky open and flush the "master" hiding behind the curtain out into the light!
003's four limbs exploded into motion, turning into a white gale heading straight for the livestock pen at the village center.
BANG.
One massive bone-white tiger claw slapped down without mercy.
A sturdy draft ox chewing on fodder didn't even have time to react.
Its massive head shattered explosively like an overripe watermelon! Blood and brain matter splattered radially across the wooden fence.
Immediately followed by the second. Then the third!
Didn't the bounty notice mention mummified livestock and a mutant beast? Mo Fan sneered coldly from inside 003's skull. I'm just helping you make the case airtight right now!
RUMBLE!
The collapse of the livestock pens and the dying screams of the oxen instantly shattered the village's tranquility.
"MONSTER! THERE'S A MONSTER!!!"
"HELP! A DEMON HAS ENTERED THE VILLAGE!"
Screaming and wailing rose from all sides; the painted facade of this false peace was brutally torn to shreds.
A few young hunters who prided themselves on being brave grabbed their steel pitchforks and machetes.
With red eyes, they rushed out, attempting to protect their home.
"Courting death."
Mo Fan didn't even glance at these reckless mortals.
003's long white bone tail—modified from the spine of a shadow leopard—swept out violently like a fully-loaded steel whip!
CRACK! BANG!
Bones broke. Those young hunters went flying over forty feet like kites with their strings cut!
They spewed mouthfuls of fresh blood while still in mid-air, smashing heavily against the dirt walls, their fates unknown.
With this strike, the villagers' final psychological defense line collapsed completely.
They screamed, scrambled, and crawled, scattering and fleeing in all directions, wishing their parents had given them two extra legs.
Mo Fan couldn't be bothered to chase after these ants. He had something more important to do.
Find the array's core.
Summon No. 003 smoothly transformed into a ruthless bulldozer.
BOOM!
It headbutted and collapsed a nearby thatched hut!
CRASH!
Waving its massive bone claws, it directly uprooted that large locust tree in the center of the village.
That deeply wrong, suspicious tree that looked like an array node—viciously ripping it out of the ground!
Dust flew. Rubble splattered. Under 003's rampage, the entire Linshui Village was rapidly degenerating into ruins.
Meanwhile.
In the inner hall of the grandest village head's house at the center of the village, the atmosphere was completely the opposite of the bloody storm outside.
Lamps burned bright. The Eight Immortals table was covered in fine wine and meat.
Fang Tong sat with his legs crossed without any regard for his image, taking large bites out of a roast chicken. Holding a wine bowl in one hand, he boasted smugly:
"Old man, I'm telling you, my luck exploded on this trip! Hooked four fish in one breath!"
Sitting opposite him, that old village head who had been kind-faced and otherworldly during the day...
Where was there any trace of a solemn elder now?
He was hunched over like a slave, pouring wine for Fang Tong with a face full of sycophantic flattery, echoing repeatedly: "Indeed, indeed! With Lord Fang taking action, it is naturally in the bag!"
Just as the two were exchanging toasts, fantasizing about promotions, wealth, and immortality...
BANG!
The door to the inner hall was smashed open by someone stumbling and crawling in.
A villager covered in blood staggered in, collapsing on the ground in terror, crying and shouting miserably:
"Village Head! Disaster! It's so bad! A terrifying monster has entered the village! It's on a killing spree! All the livestock are dead, it even uprooted the big tree!"
His good mood interrupted, Fang Tong frowned and slammed his wine bowl down on the table with a sharp clack.
He didn't take it seriously at all, assuming some ordinary mountain beast—a crazed black bear, maybe—had wandered in from the back mountain by mistake.
In his view, this was the perfect opportunity to show off his strength, and casually grab this wild beast for a side dish with his wine.
He stood up abruptly, snatching the thick-backed long saber resting by the table.
Fueled by liquid courage, he sneered: "What's the panic! Scared like this over a trivial matter, what a disgrace!"
"Wait for your father to go chop that beast up!"
Carrying his long saber menacingly, Fang Tong kicked open the courtyard gate and roared as he rushed to the plaza in the center of the village.
"WHERE IS IT?! ROLL OUT HERE AND ACCEPT YOUR DEATH!"
Morning mist. Dust flying in the air. Wreckage everywhere.
Following Fang Tong's roar, the smoke and dust ahead were gradually blown away by an icy, sinister wind.
Fang Tong's meteor-like, striding footsteps froze violently, dead in their tracks.
The insufferably arrogant madness on his face—the absolute, unshakeable confidence of a man who had never met anything he couldn't handle—froze solid the instant he clearly saw the figure ahead.
Because what stood before him was not an ordinary mutated wild boar. Nor was it a crazed black bear.
What stood before him... Was a skeletal monstrosity the size of a small house, covered entirely in a cold, hard metallic luster!
Beneath one of the monster's massive sharp claws, it was stepping on a mangled, dead ox.
Hearing Fang Tong's roar, it slowly turned that terrifying white bone skull toward him.
Those two clusters of ghostly blue soul-fire dancing in the ghastly white eye sockets were staring dead at him through the icy morning mist.
And in those flames—unmistakably, impossibly—was anthropomorphic mockery and ridicule!
The extremely pure, suffocating death pressure belonging to a true undead creature, devoid of any vitality, rushed at his face like a tsunami!
All the blood in Fang Tong's body thoroughly congealed in this instant. His brain went completely blank.
CLANG!
The thick-backed long saber he was so proud of slipped from his hands, smashing heavily onto the bluestone slabs.
Those legs of his—legs that had trampled over countless mountains of corpses and seas of blood and prided themselves on being audacious—were violently trembling completely beyond his control.
Drip... drop... drip...
A stream of warm yellow liquid trickled down Fang Tong's trousers, dripping and pooling into a glaring puddle on the dust-covered bluestone slabs...